Kairospix Photoblog
Life – Discoveries In The Water II
Posted by kairospix (Singapore, Singapore) on 23 August 2007 in Abstract & Conceptual and Portfolio.
I was rather amused and also disappointed to find this plastic chair floating in the water of the small lake in Punggol Park. What in the world was it doing there?
Some irresponsible person must have hurled it in to the water for sure. It became the second of my discoveries in the water.
As I thought about it I sometimes wonder why humans do the things that they do, especially if it made no sense to do so. If we are rational beings then technically we should be doing only rational logical things, things which make sense.
But we must be careful of falling into the trap that if it’s logical and rational it is correct and right to do it. Sometimes rational logic can lead to wrong immoral decisions.
We have all heard of how one can rationalized away what is morally not right. Just think of Hilter and his “Final Solution” campaign to purged the world of inferior races and species which included the disabled and mentally ill. To him and his 3rd Reich it was only logical to get rid of people who are not productive so as to preserve the resources for the superior species and thus preserve the latter. Eugenics, which was widely practiced and accepted in Germany during the periods of the first and second world war, was an established study at their universities and a Professor was actually appointed specifically in this field to look into how to put the idea of eugenics into practice.
The cold rational logic of eugenics is that in order to preserve the gene pool of the superior species you must not contaminate it with other lower inferior species which is as rational and logical as saying in order not to pollute whatever clean water you have, don’t mix it with the unclean water and get rid of the dirty water.
Confucius once said, “Learning without thought and you are blind; Thinking without learning is a great danger.” This quote rightly points out the importance of having both learning and thinking. But does having both guarantee that what is morally ethical will be upheld? I submit that it can’t be guaranteed. See how even in the case of Germany during the first half of the twentieth century that even with learning (i.e., the academics of the universities were involved) and thinking (i.e., rational logical scientific reasoning were applied) it still became a monstrous killing machine decimating millions of innocent lives.
I submit that there is a third element that we must place in the equation to ensure we remain truly as a human being and not just another animal species. That element is morality that is doing the right thing which should be governed by the law of seeking the good of others. So I would humbly like to add on a third line as follows:
Learning without thought and you are blind;
Thinking without learning is a great danger;
But learning and thinking without morals makes us savage beasts.
Camera - Canon Powershot G6
Lens - Canon 7.2 - 28.8mm (approx. 35 - 140mm)
Capture date - 12 Aug 2007
Aperture - f 8.0
Shutter speed - 1/125 sec
Shooting mode - aperture priority
Exposure bias - 0EV
Metering mode - Pattern
ISO - 50
Focal length - 28.8mm (approx. 140mm)
Stabilization - Hand-held
Lighting? - Outdoor Natural Light
Flash - Not fired
Post-processing? - PS LRoom processed
Cropped? - No
